CLEAR LAKE, IA-As the saying goes..”A picture is worth a thousand words,” every year, thousands of senior high school students take a day to capture their school age image.

While most seniors are graduating and throwing parties this month..the class behind them are preparing for their photo shoots.
The senior portrait is a special image that captures a moment in time

And for students..they serve an important role in remembering life-long friends.

“A lot of times you hand them out to friends and classmates and they get to pick which ones they want and a lot of times you write on them and that’s just a fun thing to do but also your invitations, said Senior Mary Huffman.

The way these pictures are created have certainly changed over the years.

“Today, senior pictures are really trying to tell the story of the individual you’re photographing,” said Images Photography Owner Craig Kienast.

What used to be a simple pose, now is a bit more complex.

“What we are doing now with senior portraits is high fashion modeling sessions, story telling, editorial session,” said Kienast.

10 years ago it only took about 30-40 minutes to complete a senior photo shoot now you’re looking at 3-4 house.

Most photographers now use digital equipment..which makes the impossible..possible.

“You can print on metal, you can print on rocks, you can print it on canvas anything you want..I even developed artist techniques to print them on gold leaf,” said Kienast.

During a session here you not only get the re touching and editing to the pictures, you also are the star of a music video.

But what does this first class treatment cost?

“Costs have gone up a little bit everything going up, we haven’t personally raised our prices for several years but everything that comes into the studio costs us more with digital. We have to buy a new camera every 2 years,” said Kienast.

At this studio the range is about 5 or 6 hundred bucks up to more than a grand.

But some students are taking the opposite approach.

“It was really, really cheap. Under 100 dollars and we just went out one day, took a bunch of pictures in the afternoon an then she sent them to me a few weeks later and I just edited them all myself on some random site,” said Huffman.

Either way, it’s evident this tradition is constantly changing.

“Who knows with technology where’s it going to go, we could have 3 dimensional holographic images that talk back to you,” said Kienast.

Photographers have a few suggestions before you hit your photo shoot. They say to drink plenty of water to avoid chapped lips and to stay out of the sun so you don’t have tan lines.